From the World Wisdom online library: www. worldwisdom.com/public/library/default.aspx 23. CHRISTIAN ESOTERICISM AND PRIMORDIAL TRADITION* Two kinds of ecumenisms are usually distinguished: “branches” and “roots.” The “ecumenism of branches” concerns the reconciliation of the three Christian confessions. With generous intentions, it all too often addresses the problem from the wrong end by dwelling on his­ torical or dogmatic considerations having little interest today with respect to the seriousness of the times, and without any of the three confessions in question being thoroughly convinced of the need for making the first sacrifices. In all immediate susceptibility, it would be incumbent upon Catholicism to renounce its legalism and papal monolithism, upon Protestantism to give up its rigid moralism and open up to the monastic and supernatural dimensions, upon Orthodoxy to abandon a certain intransigence that is no longer in season.1 Even when concessions are made here and there, even when a harmonization is in sight, a serious danger subsists: that of the break-up and thoughtless mixture of forms for which the tradition­ al movements pay. An excessive opening to the others increases the disorder under the cover of intercommunion, as well as developing the seeds of a dissolution of structures and a phenomenon of entropy. Similarly, an excessive withdrawal encourages a lack of growth, vitality, and flexibility, imprisons in ritualism and fossiliza­ tion, turns the sanctuary into a “laundered sepulcher.” In one case or the other, the absence of balance and moderation creates a risk of death. Rather than wanting to sew the too disparate points of view together, it would be undoubtedly wiser to consider that beyond the outdated disputes, the differences of mentalities and temperaments—Latin, Germanic, and Slavic to simplify—constitute * From Return to the Essential, III, 3. 1 We know these schematizations may be excessive. There are very different, if not opposing, tendencies in the bosom of the Reformed Church, including, since recently, a contemplative tendency. The Roman Church has become more flexible and decentralized, though a firm authority is justified in the dissolution phases. As for the Byzantine Church, its defiance with regard to Western Christians is explained by its minority position and its legitimate fear of being absorbed. Its internal dissentions do it great harm. 239 Returning to the Essential: Selected Writings of Jean Biès and inspire the diverse visages of a Church that is one and the same, whose true unity is not at the level of rites and theologies, which are tributary to these same differences, but at the level of an identical core which is none other than Christian esotericism.2 The “ecumenism of roots” concerns the meeting of religions growing from the same tree; as it happens, the three Semitic reli­ gions. A meeting that, from certain aspects, presents serious diffi­ culties, especially at the level of the Divine Unity that seems disturbed by the Incarnation of the Son, but which under other aspects and paradoxically, seems more readily feasible: the same metaphysical elements of Super-Being, Being, and Manifestation, the same eschatological elements concerning the “ultimate ends” of man and the world, the same mystical elements of the realization are found, through changing imageries, in the Torah, the Gospels, and the Koran. Judaism refers to Abraham by Isaac and Jacob, as does Islam by Ishmael, while Christianity refers to Abraham and to Melchizedek, which explains its special role with regard to the two others. If the major element is moved—the Super-Being in Judaism, the Divine Unity in Islam, the Trinity in Christianity—if the essen­ tial priorities equally differ, such as Gnosis or Rigor in Islam and Judaism, Mystic and Mercy in Christianity, the three religions unite in the conceptions of a unique and transcendent God, of the macrocosm and microcosm. We can, however, imagine a third ecumenism, which would be the one of “flowers,” of an infinitely more delicate order, where each of the three religions considered—in the same way that flowers are the result of subtle elaborations and the convergence of slow and secret previous maturations—would reveal its hidden goods with the movements that preceded them and from which they are derived, or the even more distant ones that they encountered and that enriched them with their contributions. In this way, step by step, Judaism would be put in touch with Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, as Christianity with Greece and India, and Islam with Iran and China. 2 On the notion of “Christian esotericism,” we refer to two essential authors: F. Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (1st ed.), chapters VIII and IX, and S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, chapter 1. 240 Christian Esotericism and Primordial Tradition The “ecumenism of flowers” is not limited to a defined geo­ graphic region, nor to a precise historic era; it embraces the totali­ ty of existing spiritual forms and by that constitutes the veritable reconciliation for which the two others are just the preambles. It constitutes it even more so in that this somewhat horizontal meet­ ing is superimposed on a vertical meeting where borrowing and influences cease. All these revelations proceed from a transhuman plane, from a supra-conscious or supermental center, unique in any case, and which are themselves just terrestrial refractions. Jung showed that at the psychological level, there are two kinds of unconscious that he qualified as personal and collective. The first one refers to each individual’s particular patrimony; the second one to the inner subjacent patrimony, common to all of humanity. Likewise, at the spiritual level, by turning these terms in the direc­ tion of the supra-conscious and the transconscious, we can establish that if exotericism corresponds to the conscious, the esotericism of one’s own religion will correspond to the personal unconscious; and to the collective unconscious, the esotericism that is common to the whole of religions, which will be called indiscriminately Universal Esotericism, philosophia perennis, or Primordial Tradition. As the archetypical dreams unite the heart of every man to the uni­ verse of symbols and myths belonging to all civilizations, we can say that at the level of Universal Esotericism, beyond the level of par­ ticularisms and dogmatic oppositions, the different traditions com­ municate with each other implicitly. At this level of intimacy, they reveal their common quintessence, the Spirit that originally ani­ mates them in the nudity anterior to all clothing, and that allows the introduction, even at the cost of agonizing revisions, and perhaps even thanks to them, of an entire system of equations where the Adam Qadmon, the Purusa, and the Chen-jen, where the pre-eternal Shekhinah, the Theotokos, Shakti, Demeter, and Kwan-yin, where Merlin and al-Khidr, Dionysos and Shiva are more than just distant cousins: a system of equations that is a system of evidences. This first comparison inspires us with another one. We know that scientists today are leaning more and more toward a systemic vision of the world, seeing in it an indivisible whole for which the diverse components are essentially relationships. Consequently, the uni­ verse appears as a unitary whole, composed of relatively separate and distinct parts, but which vanish at the level of subatomic parti­ cles, and are only definable in their interconnections. We might 241 Returning to the Essential: Selected Writings of Jean Biès even say, mutatis mutandis, that Universal Esotericism is the systemic vision of the Spiritual, linking together these religions (whose main role is to link together3), and tracing between their different doc­ trinal points, over the artificial demarcations, henceforth abolished, an entire network of lines similar to those linking together the stars. For Universal Esotericism, the veritable reality is a whole made up of several revelations communicating with each other at the keenest level, that of “transcendent Intellect.” We might even complete the comparison by adding that, as in David Bohm’s theory of the so- called “implicate” or “enveloped” order, where each part of the hologram contains the whole, each religion, similarly, contains, implicates the others. Each one, however, favors some aspects to the detriment of certain others; and it doesn’t take much more for these differences in the degrees of insistence to create the belief that the religions are radically opposed to each other. We are mistaken besides in believing that Christianity wanted to oust other religions for good. It undoubtedly felt tempted more than once in its phase of conquering expansion, at that time moved less by the action of the Holy Spirit than by what Camus calls “European arrogance.” But these vague hegemonic impulses per­ tain to the instances of exotericism and sooner or later collide with territorial limits. Christ himself proclaims “in my Father’s house there are many mansions,” and “they shall come from the east, the west, the north and the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.” Among the interpretations of these verses, there is one that is quite significant: the plurality of mansions corresponds to that of the paradises obtained at the end of different posthumous evolu­ tions, which are related to the diversity of the spiritual paths. As for the East, which is alluded to, it seems difficult to restrict it to Palestine. For the Easterners who did not receive his message, Christ recognizes implicitly the legitimacy of their own tradition, its possibility for their “redemption” and to appear at the messianic wedding banquet. That “the wind bloweth where it listeth” is to be taken in a similar meaning: the spirit’s gratuitousness of action is such that men of God exist in all the forms of spirituality. 3 Translator’s Note: From a play on words in the original French text: “reliant ensem­ ble les religions dont le rôle principal est lui-même de relier....” This is based on the Latin roots of religion: religere meaning to “bring together” and religare, to “assemble” (See also the Translator’s Note on this point at Chapter 7, fn.